


Retribution

by bfcure



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Apocalypse, Character Death, Drama, Episode Related, Episode: s04e01 Tempus, Gen, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 11:25:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/735131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bfcure/pseuds/bfcure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Never try to rewrite the time if you are not the Doctor...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Retribution

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Воздаяние](https://archiveofourown.org/works/731985) by [bfcure](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bfcure/pseuds/bfcure). 



> If Adam Worth broke time and space, don't try to fix it yourself. Leave timey-wimey for professionals (Time Lords).
> 
> This is the English version of my fic (link to the Russian original above).  
> So, you see, English is not my first language - please, be kind, I know I have problems with preppositions and punctuation...

“I’ll try to find us some canned food”, Lina says.

Helen found her in Birmingham two weeks ago. The girl was dawdling along the road like a machine, but she was definitely _human_ , and Helen, forgetting her own rules (she was an ex-Head of Sanctuary Network now, so maybe the rules weren’t important anymore), opened the door of her car.

Soon they decided to make a short stop in London: they needed gas and supplies to continue their endless trip to Cardiff. There are rumours about reservation there (of sorts), the last outpost of the humankind.

“Pay attention to the expiration date”.

Helen passes the stall with vegetables, almost buried in the cloud of black mold and ignores the maggots and flies that potter around in the pieces of meat.

The meat is so rotten at this point that even rats wouldn’t eat it, and its smell erased all other smells and aromas.

Water in plastic bottles, crackers, stewed fruits in tin cans – they all will turn to dust. The organic substance consumes itself, the buildings are overgrown with moss and rust, telegraph poles and water towers are going down in piles of metal parts and bricks.

Helen would have given anything for the cup of tea, prepared properly, like in the old times, though the tea that told of warmth and safety before, now evokes one image in her mind, again and again: Imogene Worth’s white lips and her death-blue tongue, fallen out of her mouth. Helen remembers how the girl scratched her own throat, straining to inhale some oxygen, how her fingers froze at the unnatural angle forever. Helen didn’t want Imogene to suffer, not really. The poison was meant to bring the symptoms of the girl’s illness back, not to kill her brutally in five minutes. Perhaps, Helen put some wrong ingredient in Imogene’s cup by mistake. And perhaps, she just miscalculated the dose.

Helen’s dream-state is broken by Lina’s loud screams, full of panic and dread. But it’s already too late – the living dead cover poor girl’s body like a blanket of rotten flesh and bones, and they open their hungry jaws in anticipation.

“I’m so sorry, Lina”.

Helen runs to the door, it’s not far, just two or three meters, but she trips over some bags and falls down.

Bony fingers immediately crawl under her skirt, tear apart her underwear and blouse. The swollen palms with postmortem lividity stroke her feet and her thighs gently.

“Dear God, they are going to…”

Helen tries to break free and hears the fingers on her left hand breaking with a crump. Adrenaline makes the pain almost tolerable.

She turns her head – Lina stopped screaming, there’s nothing left to scream with. Her skull is open like a tin can and the dead eat the horrible dainty choking and gulping.

Those, who hold Helen, pull her hair and touch her lips with deteriorating mouths, bite her shoulders, leaving the traces of slime and her own blood: they are like dogs that had got the deer in their full possession. Helen howls and keeps struggling.

Three gunshots, in a row.

“James?”

His body is the perfect example of anatomical study thing in the biology class: flesh and bones take turns, the flesh hanging in pitiful cobweb-like rags, and under remains of his life supporting device Helen can distinguish the fragments of his once white silk shirt. His grin is the one of the Egyptian mummy with dark holes between yellow loose teeth, and the fingers clutching the gun are skinless, but this is definitely James Watson.

“James...”

It’s a cry for help. Somehow Helen believes that her oldest friend wouldn’t harm her, against all odds. She tries to reach him, but the world around her blows up, painting the reality with bright acid spots.

When the red haze goes away, Helen sees that she lies in the backseat of her van and James is standing above her with needle and suture, his hands in the pair of clean medicine gloves.

“You are very fortunate, my dear. The apothecary was a drug addict, so now I can give you some morphine. And those dead lads couldn’t bite big pieces. I’ll patch you up in no time and you will be as good as new”, he whispers soothingly.

James uses a lot of the said morphine, sewing together the cuts on Helen’s legs, thighs and forearms and putting a splint on her broken fingers – it doesn’t hurt and during the process Helen giggles like a drunken schoolgirl. Walking corpse is taking care of her and protecting her from big scary zombies. Very funny.

“I’ll become one of them?”

“Don’t think so, but if you feel the sudden urge to eat brains, tell me, all right?”

James’ sense of humor didn’t leave him, it seems. And Source Blood in their veins saved them both from fate that is far worse than death.

“We need another car. This one is ruined”, Helen says out loud.

James chooses the brown sedan: the rust is absent and the tank is full. Helen thinks that previous owner also decided to stop for some food, but he hadn’t an armed James to watch his back. With a moan Helen arranges herself on the front seat and greedily drinks mineral water from the bottle James brought from the drugstore. James puts on the fresh pair of gloves and starts the engine. The highway is empty and inviting.

Only forward. Only westward.

“I don’t understand. I put everything right, I didn’t let Adam...”, Helen sobs.

“You poisoned an innocent child”.

“There wasn’t any alternative! Adam destroyed Praxis and intended to…”

“Didn’t you think that it had to be that way? That your lovely Praxis was doomed from the beginning? Maybe Worth had nothing to do with changing the timeline. Maybe it’s _you_ ”.

“ Do you wanna say that all of this – tsunami, the floods, the invasion of the aggressive zombies, this whole bloody Apocalypse – is _my_ fault? That all of this happened, because I did something horrible one hundred and thirteen years ago?”

James doesn’t answer, but his silence is expressive enough.

Somewhere, far away Henry growls and plunges himself against the walls in the fury of the wild, mad animal, and Will dances for Kali naked, but Kali can’t hear him.

Somewhere, far away there is air, still not poisoned by mold and disintegration of organic cells.

Perhaps, in Cardiff Bay Helen will be able to remember how the salty freshness of the sea feels like, if she’s lucky.

Fatigue envelops her like a thick cocoon. Helen snuggles against James, her head on his shoulder, breathes in the smell of earth and decay, and closes her eyes.


End file.
